Floodplain Stories

Which fissure do you plug first on a quickly crumbling sea wall? Maybe you quit the ad hoc repairs and step back and let the water wash over you. Perhaps instead of a sea wall we need boats to flow with the current. The focus maybe shouldn’t be on the sea wall at all but on the wave itself. One must consider the source– the tremulous sub-oceanic shrug of the Earth rocking the surface. That source– that tectonic shrug– ripples through our culture in this historical moment. Our society is rending at several seams from internal pressure. The cultural subduction zone manifests in many tremors– racial justice, global environmental emergency, the collapse of cultural institutions and labor unrest– all appear as insurmountable problems. Small fissures meant to be addressed individually. Another view is that all erupt from a shared human desire to break apart existing institutions that are killing us all. The images on this work comes from the subconscious of the Americas. Jaguar men, flooded borders, six-breasted snakes inhabit picture planes made physical through fired glaze and clay. The pots are meant to confuse boundaries and contexts. A platter becomes a painting and a jar the cover of a book. The stories are fragments that rise up from the flotsam of overflowing rivers and besieged shorelines.

Floodplain Stories

Which fissure do you plug first on a quickly crumbling sea wall? Maybe you quit the ad hoc repairs and step back and let the water wash over you. Perhaps instead of a sea wall we need boats to flow with the current. The focus maybe shouldn’t be on the sea wall at all but on the wave itself. One must consider the source– the tremulous sub-oceanic shrug of the Earth rocking the surface. That source– that tectonic shrug– ripples through our culture in this historical moment. Our society is rending at several seams from internal pressure. The cultural subduction zone manifests in many tremors– racial justice, global environmental emergency, the collapse of cultural institutions and labor unrest– all appear as insurmountable problems. Small fissures meant to be addressed individually. Another view is that all erupt from a shared human desire to break apart existing institutions that are killing us all. The images on this work comes from the subconscious of the Americas. Jaguar men, flooded borders, six-breasted snakes inhabit picture planes made physical through fired glaze and clay. The pots are meant to confuse boundaries and contexts. A platter becomes a painting and a jar the cover of a book. The stories are fragments that rise up from the flotsam of overflowing rivers and besieged shorelines.